I survived the heatwave! Congratulations to all those who graduated, and to continuing students who received results this week! 

A few of us on the Officer Team started off the week in UWE (University of West England) for a networking event with other Sabbatical Officers in the South West. I really enjoyed talking to so many passionate officers and learning about their ambitions for the year ahead!  

Over the last couple of weeks, I've started to have conversations with Students' Union (SU) staff about the role and operation of Liberation Network and Diversity and Support (D&S) Exec. Before becoming Community Officer, my involvement with The SU was mostly within these areas, and so it's really exciting to be able to steer their direction and address some of the challenges my fellow committee members faced in the last year. If you have any thoughts in this area (or any other!), please feel free to send me an email. I look forward to being able to share more details when plans are a bit more developed. 

A big part of this week has been attending graduations. In each ceremony (excluding those with an honorary graduate), the SU Officer Team were invited to give a speech to celebrate and thank each cohort of graduates. I feel hugely privileged to have been able to speak at some of the graduations, and it was lovely to have acknowledgment from the university of the hugely important role the Students Union has within student experience. 

I had some lovely meetings this week as well! I met with Rose Stephenson, who is the Policy and Projects Manager at the university; we had a great chat about some of the projects we will be working together on this year, and it was really interesting to learn a bit more about the role of policy within our institution. I also met with Liz Kearton, Deputy Director of Student Support (previously Student Services), and it was exciting to talk about preventive and community based mental health support.  

All in all, it's been a pretty tiring week and I'll certainly be sleeping a lot over the weekend! I'm definitely looking forward to next week, and am sure to be energised by the events of this week when I'm back on Monday.  

Bye for now!  

Blake x

*Graduation photo taken by the University photographer - Nic Delves-Broughton

Links in plaintext:

Liberation Network - https://www.thesubath.com/voice/liberation/liberation-network/ 

D&S Exec - https://www.thesubath.com/diversity-support/exec/  

My Email – sucommunity@bath.ac.uk  

Graduations page - https://www.bath.ac.uk/topics/award-ceremonies/